In underground mining, efforts are being made to achieve universal, structurally modular control systems for a variety of applications in order to reduce the costs associated with development, manufacturing, certification and spare parts stockage of the hardware. The main area of application of such control systems is underground electro-hydraulic longwall mining for coal winning systems with ploughs or shearers. Such coal winning systems require a high number of actuators or sensors to be controlled. On a particular underground face, a multitude of identically-equipped controllers can be used in adjacent shield supports. However, on another face the controller may have to meet other requirements since, for example other actuators or sensors may have to be controlled and/or the controller must be able to process other control programs. At the same time, it must be possible to adapt the software implemented in the controller to different hardware platforms and/or control tasks. Since typically, a common controller design is used for each of many applications, one or more of the controllers are often over-sized or not particularly matched to a corresponding application.
Accordingly, there is a need for a controller that may be readily and easily configured for a variety of applications. It would be desirable to provide such a controller that was particularly adapted for use in an underground mining control system. The controller should be readily configurable to control or monitor a number of actuators or sensors, or interface with other control programs. It is further desirable to provide a controller that can readily adapt its software to different hardware platforms or control functions.